On August 17 the notorious ‘punk-group’ Pussy Riot was sentenced to two years in prison by the criminal court in Moscow. For the last weeks the destiny of three mediocre Russian clown-girls has been in focus of public attention worldwide. Galaxies of world celebrities and officials from McCartney to German Bundestag have wasted their time writing letters demanding their release. Dozens of head-masked hot tits were shown in public places to support their Russian pairs. Most likely the hysterics around Pussy Riot will be fed for some more time. Meanwhile the sober analysis of this scandal is obviously pending.

We’ll remind the chronology of the story for those who luckily didn’t follow it from the beginning. Last February a group of young girls and their supporters entered the majestic Christ the Savior Cathedral in the very heart of Moscow. They came closer to the ambon, quickly put up fancy cloaks and balaclavas and started shaking legs and shouting obscene and blasphemous verses. In formal language they were intentionally offending the worshippers. The performance lasted for less than a minute while rioters’ support group was filming the action on mobile phones and their security crew was busy repelling the attempts of churchmen to stop them. Later that day a mounted video-clip of the ‘performance’ with an overlapped music track appeared on YouTube.

It is still arguable whether the decision to prosecute the blasphemers was right. They have lost freedom – but for a while gained a worldwide ‘fame’. No doubt it was not a single spontaneous act by a group of dissolute individuals but an episode of a much wider global campaign to shake and eventually ruin traditional societies and institutions. It is being carried out by the same powerful circles which have inspired e.g. offensive caricatures of Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper in 2005. The international brain-washing media machine has turned a paltry incident in Moscow into a scandal of the global scale. These three sluts, previously known in Russia exclusively for a sickening act of group sex they have performed in public with their partners in Zoological Museum of Moscow back in 2008 (those not too fastidious can see the video of that orgy here), were chosen as a symbol of ‘civil protest’ and ‘abuse of power’ in Russia! For the Russians that is a ridiculous and even crazy endeavor. However for the cosmopolitan post-modernists busy shaping future global societies it is apparently not.

It is an open secret that avant-gardism became popular in the West in 1950-1960s thanks to unprecedented support from the CIA and was used by the United States as a powerful ideological weapon. Donald Jameson, a former CIA case officer, confessed to The Independent in 1995:

“Regarding Abstract Expressionism, I’d love to be able to say that the CIA invented it just to see what happens in New York and downtown SoHo tomorrow! It was recognised that Abstract Expressionism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was. And that relationship was exploited in some of the exhibitions.”

Nelson Rockefeller (1908-1979), who used to serve as the Special Assistant to the US President for Psychological Warfare and director of New York Museum of Modern Art in 1950s, clearly understood that modern art is not just business but a powerful tool forming human conscience in due (projected) direction. By the way, the Board of Trustees of the museum included high-ranked CIA officers William Paley (a close friend of Allen Dulles) and Henry Luce (creator of Time/Life Media Empire).

No wonder that such a respectful patronage of the Modern Art (naturally together with huge sponsor injections) have soon brought some smelly fruits. In 1961 a scandalous Italian sculptor Pietro Manzoni shocked the public by a new masterpiece, called “The Artist’s Shit”. He explained the idea the following way: “If a collector wants to get something where the artist has put himself entirely, let him get his shit which is 100% personal”. So he did sealing his excrements in the cans labeled ‘Merda d’Artista’ in Italian, English, German and French languages. He had managed to produce 90 autographed cans before a myocardial infarction buried him two years later. The devastating reality is that he used to sell these 30-gram cans for the same measure of gold. In 2000 the famous London Tate Gallery bought the can #4 for 22300 pounds, and in 2007 another masterpiece was sold at Sotheby’s for 124000 Euros! Indeed, contemporary art is not quite an Art, but a symbol of political ideology embodied in certain artifacts. Its value is proportional to the rating of the ideology being propagated. Since 1950s the global cultural degradation has been one of the most lavishly paid projects in the West. These seeds have been grown even in Russia as the excremental Pussy Riot shows. The outrageous public reaction on the ‘Western modern art’ which suddenly spewed from the radical underground to the Cathedral’s ambon was natural and understandable. The consequent response of the authorities to such challenges should be smarter next time.

Some months ago Russia witnessed an act of evil. We, Russian believers, perceive this event in this way. In the church, built in honor of freeing Russia from Napoleon’s invasion, in the church which for us is the greatest national shrine, four young girls began to dance right before the altar swearing, singing sacrilegious songs and offences to Patriarch, who is for all of us the spiritual leader and honorable man. All this Bacchanalia was filmed and blown the world. Needless to say what a shock and spit in the soul we, Russian orthodox religious people, had experienced.

Several weeks before this event Pussy Riot tried to do something similar in another Moscow church. They were politely asked out without giving this public utterance. They conducted a similar action in the Red Square, just exactly where you, dear Sir Paul, gave your concert. And again, sacrilege and twisting were left without any consequences. At last, before the “action” in the Church of Christ the Savior members of Pussy Riot cropped up and performed an act of group sex with their partners in the State Zoo Museum in the broad daylight and in the presence of visitors including children. Video and photos of this effrontery were also made public in Internet and shown over the central Russian TV channels.

Sir Paul, I would like to ask you whether you consider these actions normal? What could happen in future if these so called punk rock performers who in reality have nothing to do either with punk movement or with rock music were not stopped? Of course, times are changing and in the “civilized world” this is probably considered normal, but I cannot imagine that musicians of Beatles group even with their nonconformity would allow something alike in the presence of children in a museum. There exist some norms of moral, decency, ethic, good and evil, not necessarily connected with this or that religion, which nobody can neglect. Because if the people overstep this limits, the will lose the character of Homo Sapiens and become the animal.

Dear Sir Paul, I am sure that you and other famous musicians were misled as to the essence of this latter event and came out for Pussy Riot without knowing these details. That is why I ventured to let you know the position of Russian believers. In your letter addressed to Pussy Riot you struggle for the freedom of art and self-expression. Nobody is against. Everything – freedom, art and self-expression – are elementary rights which God gave every man. As Lord Jesus Christ is teaching us, You shall know the Truth, ant the Truth shall make you free (The Gospel According to John, ch. 8, para. 32). Christianity is the religion of lovers of liberty and free-thinking people.

And in the present Russia our desire to be free is multiplied by that life experience in totalitarian communist state which we, Russians, had. Sir Paul, please note that the Russian Orthodox Church did not call upon to punish Pussy Riot: judicial proceedings took place upon the court petition of private persons who had been deeply offended by their act. And I understand those people. When Pussy Riot blasphemes in the street, it is their private affair. Many people do the same. But if they break into our church disturbing praying people, blaming our God, out faith, our Patriarch, they offend personally each of us.

Please tell me, Sir Paul, what would be your reaction if during your concert somebody run onto the scene and began to break your instruments, hindering your performance and then took your microphone and in dirty words offend everything that is dear and sacred for you, i.e. your wife, your parents, your art, your moral values? Would you call it self-expression and freedom of art or consider it as usual disorderly conduct? And what would you do in such a situation? I think that as a man possessing chivalry you would not wait for the guard but take actions against such a person yourself.

Probably the sentence for Pussy Riot is somewhat severe. But it was passed by the judiciary bodies. Wishing these young women good, please understand also us, orthodox believers. To nobody we wish ill, prison, long time in prisons, but at the same time we wish that our shrines for which not in so far past out fathers and grandfathers spilled blood, were subjected such an affront. It was not us who pitched the members of Pussy Riot group but it were they who plunged into our church and insulted deeply the present people and thousands of Internet users, which saw the movie with this sacrilege. They mocked before the God’s altar. And we wish not long terms in prison for these ill-educated and disorderly women but only that something similar will never take place in any of our churches.

With all due respect,
Hegumen Sergy (Ribko),
Rector of Moscow Church of Holy Spirit, in the 1970s – drummer of a rock-group and member of hippies movement.”

Actually we can understand the motives of Sir Paul and other international pop-stars who have expressed support to these clown-girls. First of all they were just ill-informed. Otherwise we can’t explain how Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers could agree pulling on a T-shirt for unknown porno-‘punks’ none of whom can play, sing or dance and there is no hope they would have ever acquire such abilities. If he had listened to their ‘music’, he would have demanded a capital penalty. He and others were just told that ‘Putin suppresses a feminist group and they need help’ and they did what they could. Who’s told that? Some smiley guys always hanging around musical business. Any producer getting well with his head knows that he should listen to these guys if he doesn’t want to have problems with his wards – chronically cocainized, drunkenly crushing cars and hotel suits and having sex with minors.

Are they aware of the fact they are loosing popularity in Russia by supporting a marginal porno-‘punk’ group? Probably not. But would such an awareness downgrade the well-paid international media campaign? Unlikely. We are afraid the price of the shit-cans would be just several times higher. The puppeteers of Modern Art and Cultural Terrorism keep carrying out their mission.

That`s exactly the core question to be put, although the answer is well known: who are the puppeteers, the actual string holders? But the amazing thing is to discover how deep is the degree of naivety and collective imbecilization. Artists, intellectuals and even “Green” Secretaries of State manifested their indignation in relation to the girl`s being prosecuted just for manifesting this new post-modern avatar of the ” Abstract Expressionism “, diligently conceived and fabricated from far abroad.

@Edward, if you kindly reread the article you will see that we are trying to consider a wider perspective of the PR problem than it is used to be discussed in the media. ‘CIA’ here is not exactly an organization but a comprehensive term describing the subjects of the world’s politics that tends to act in a clandestine manner and promote an agenda not quite understandable by the general public. Will you laugh or disagree with such a reasonable approach?

“‘CIA’ here is not exactly an organization but a comprehensive term describing the subjects of the world’s politics that tends to act in a clandestine manner and promote an agenda not quite understandable by the general public.”
This is more a subterfuge or smoke screen which could provide a simplistic conspiratorial explanation for anything…not unlike the Illuminati. But this is just delusional foolishness. The real danger is your unabashed support for the reactionary Russian ruling class.

@Wayne: A lot of emotions in your comment, no facts. No reasons. We’ve explained in our post what is the substance of the current degradable cultural trends in the world and who pays for it. Unfortunately Russian ruling class has almost nothing to do with the defense of faith and moral principles of the Russian people. Right, they are reactionary because they have to react at the righteous indignation of the Russians against PR. That is good. That is just democratic. Applaud it.

[…] advanced society, because such lapses are not possible in this country. Suffice it to recall the sharply negative reaction of the Russian public to the profane antics of the punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow’s biggest […]